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I did a thing. On bandcamp.

As a matter of fact, it’s a thing that I only decided to do yesterday and finished this afternoon. From that you can pretty much already deduce the quality.

The basic story is this: I have a friend, who I often joke is my 1 fan, and there is not a number in front of that 1. Well, the last few times he’s visited, he’s been trying to convince me to release a live album of open mic recordings. I don’t actually record myself at open mics because it honestly never occurs to me, and I also am lukewarm to the idea to begin with. But, the last time he was over, I had just finished the poetry project and mentioned that I had to decide what my next project was going to be. I didn’t MEAN a project of stuff to release. I just meant the next thing I wanted to work on. I was leaning towards opening one of my lesson books and upping my music game, or some repair project around the house. But, I guess I wasn’t clear and he pushed the live album idea again.

It’s sort of been banging around in my head since then. I don’t really feel ‘ready’ to release music, but I also know, at this stage, making music with the intent of release is a logical next step, and one I shouldn’t dismiss out of hand, whether I don’t feel like I’m there yet or not. I’ve always been a pretty harsh critic, and if the guy who’s secretly been recording my sets in a basement open mic is pushing an album, then I owe it to someone who seems to actually give a crap about my projects to consider releasing SOMETHING.

I’ve also been recruited for another little comedy set next month, and I guess it would be nice to say yes when asked if I have anything anywhere for a change.

So, all of that congealed in my brain until I thought ‘well, some of my rough recordings are passable’. I’m talking about the recordings of new tracks I sometimes post here, or that I just record for my own benefit to listen to them back and see if they’re working, or find out about how long they are. By and large, these are not tracks I would share with anyone, ever. But, sometimes a draft of a track lands pretty close to the end result. Those tracks became the bandcamp thing.

Is it a great album? No, not at all. It’s literally a bunch of rough tracks recorded on a cell phone. How good can it be? But, if you like weird singer-songwriter tracks played on instruments that are not always as in tune as they ought to be and songs that sound like they were recorded from the bottom of a tin can, maybe you’ll like it, and I think that makes you weird, but who am I to judge? And, anyway, since I know how bad it is, it’s pay what you want.

I think, ultimately, it’s a good release in a way. Releasing something that I think is kind of crappy out of the gate takes the pressure off of a first release, so when the time comes that I want to do the best homebrew tracks I can, well, I already have one crappy little album out there, so it won’t feel as intense. It won’t be the FIRST, and it can only be an improvement. I think, ultimately, it’s more important to do things than to do amazing things, because if you need everything you do to be amazing, you don’t end up actually doing anything. So, I didn’t do an amazing thing, but I did a thing, and that’s a start.